Synopsis
Tony Stark has arrived at the cave in Afghanistan where he built the prototype Iron Man armour and he's standing in front of the Mark 0 lumbering grey object itself.
In the World's Most Wanted storyarc starting in IM(2008)#8 he's been on the run from Norman Osborn who wants the secrets in his brain, particularly the Superhero Registration Database. To that end Tony's been running a process that is deleting his mind. Meanwhile he's been moving between his secret bases all over the world, switching to ever-older versions of his armour as his brain becomes unable to handle the more sophisticated types. He reached this cave on foot at the start of IM#18 after ditching his last armour.
He's explaining all this to the dumb armour while recording it on a very old tape deck. But his confused memories tell him that Afghanistan *isn't* where his origin really happened.
Cue a reprint of Tales of Suspense # 39 where he created the armour with Ho Yinsen to save his life while a captive of Wong Chu in Vietnam.
But his memory also includes things (elements of the original story) which don't make sense like wearing a suit, coat and hat in the jungle and a dictator who promises his prisoners their liberty if they defeat him in single combat. But an overhead fan reminds him of helicopter blades and James Rhodes.
Cue a reprint of Iron Man #144 which introduced us to Stark's pilot Jim and flashed back to Vietnam where Rhodey and his helicopter got the new Iron Man out of the jungle - and later Tony offered him the job when he got out of the army.
Tony decides it's irrelevant what war it was the origin happened in. And he can't remember what was so important he wanted to record it anyway. And we see that the tape machine is switched off and hasn't been recording anyway.
This is followed by text pages from the All-New Iron Manual detailing the history and armours of Tony Stark/Iron Man and James Rhodes/War Machine plus pages on Wong Chu and Ho Yinsen.